American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [58]
The chaos that ensued from the fire and the resulting move into the Barge Office left the New York immigration service in disarray. A newly elected president—William McKinley—began replacing Democratic officeholders in the immigration service with Republicans. A month after the fire, McKinley nominated Thomas Fitchie to replace Senner as commissioner. Fitchie had been a loyal Brooklyn Republican officeholder, but at age sixty-two and with no prior experience with immigration, he could hardly have been counted on to be a vigorous leader in difficult times.
America was digging itself out of the deepest economic depression in its history. As a new century approached, immigration would again pick up. The business of regulating this influx would have to continue for the time being without Ellis Island. To make matters worse, over the next four years the New York immigration service would become mired in a swamp of bureaucratic pettiness and personal vendettas that showed the limits of patronage politics.
T HIRTY-YEAR-OLD EDWARD F. MCSWEENEY, the second in command at Ellis Island, was a bulldog of a man, whose bullet-shaped head was topped by thinning black hair. Victor Safford remembered his lifelong friend as a “live wire.”
Growing up in Marlborough, Massachusetts, about thirty miles west of Boston, McSweeney dropped out of school as a child and began working in a shoe factory. Though his early biography had the makings of a Dickensian novel of drudgery and exploitation, McSweeney was more Horatio Alger than Oliver Twist.
By the time he was nineteen, he had helped found the Lasters’ Protective Union; two years later he became the union’s president. Labor work led to political work, as McSweeney became active in the Massachusetts Democratic Party. As a reward for helping round up labor support for Grover Cleveland’s successful presidential campaign, McSweeney was named assistant commissioner at Ellis Island in 1893.
Befitting someone from humble beginnings who clawed his way up through the industrial and political jungles of late-nineteenth-century America, McSweeney had an air of physicality about him. Referring to a Protestant missionary who spent much of his time proselytizing to Catholics at Ellis Island, McSweeney told Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York that if “any good would come of it, I would be delighted to call him to account with a round turn.” When an immigrant tried to bribe him with $5.00, McSweeney became indignant and smacked the man in the face. Along with such eruptions, he also displayed widely recognized administrative skills and shrewd intelligence. When McKinley became president, McSweeney, a partisan Democrat, not only retained his position but also managed to become the de facto boss at Ellis Island. Above all, McSweeney was a survivor.
McSweeney remained in a Republican administration thanks largely to new civil service regulations. Patronage was the lifeblood of politics and helped staff the small federal bureaucracy, but it also led to corruption and a tolerance for ineptitude. To deal with the problems of an increasingly complex society, a more professional federal workforce was needed. In 1896, President Cleveland placed Immigration Service workers under civil service protection. Current federal workers were not forced to take the civil service exam and were able to keep their jobs. This meant that many patronage workers remained in the service, but this time with the job protection that civil service offered. McSweeney kept his position, although his salary was reduced.
Meanwhile, the McKinley administration searched for someone to run the immigration office in Washington. The president finally settled on Terence V. Powderly, one of the most famous